


Cedar

by Ori_Cat



Series: Napalm Sticks to Kids [2]
Category: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Lockdown Drills, Murder, Reposted following reviewal, Suicide, brief author tract, more explicit terrorism, yes of the same person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:34:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: Nothing can hold forever, no matter how hard you try.Or, the AU beginning of Wolf Brother.





	Cedar

The two halves of the log fell apart with that particular _shlink_ sound, and he reached down to pick up the larger one and balance it again on the block. Small threads of wood and bark lay in a fresh circle all around, and the air was full of the oily scent of cedar wood. 

Was it technically wise to be chopping wood all alone in the middle of the day with no-one anywhere in the vicinity? Probably not. But he didn’t want to wait until an evening, because it was starting to get dark earlier and faster every day now, and besides, the amount of effort it was taking he wasn’t sure the blade was sharp enough to split flesh anymore anyway. 

Another strip the thickness of his thumb split creakily off, and he pulled apart the thin tendrils still holding it to the rest of the wood. Why was it the kindling always got eaten up faster than everything else? You could have a pile of wood up to your rafters - looking over at the shed, it seemed he was about halfway there - and use up only a little portion of that, but no matter how much kindling and how little fire you had all of it was always gone, regardless of rate. 

Well, for one, it would be a surface-area:volume ratio thing, and for a second it took more energy to get things burning than to keep them so, once the energy was already there it tended to stay in a heavy incandescent ball. More so when one had a child who preferred seeing fires burn hot and bright to seeing them burn long, who fed them with the care one would take over a pet bird. Or serpent, maybe. 

Pretty soon it was going to be too cold for fires. So they were trying to squeeze as many as they could into the space between the lifting of the fire ban and the rain really starting up again. He wondered what the kids were doing right now off at school. Were they even right now seated down on the floor in that strange half-light that always filtered through the dark paper blinds, whispering to each other as much as the teacher tried to shush them because it was exciting, wasn’t it, this break from routine. And there would always be that one kid reading that emergency instruction manual that all schools were required to have, because there was always one who took things seriously - 

No, it was already fair enough into the afternoon. They’d be all finished by now and would have returned to their classes, something interesting to report to their parents when pick-up time came. _We had a drill and got to sit under our desks and we got talked to by an actual policeman and_ \- 

He’d received the email at 9:00 on Friday, an automated message from the school. _This is a reminder that on Tuesday, September 15 there will be a lockdown/bomb threat drill. Drop-off and pick-up will remain at regular times._

He hadn’t quite been sure whether to laugh or cry. There was a problem: _You live in a town of 1200 people. Using a Poisson distribution, calculate the probability that _more than one_ of them_ \- 

Ultimately, he hadn’t laughed or cried. Just filed the information away at the bottom of his list, quietly pleased that the schools were being foresighted enough to make their announcements with time to spare. Not like when he had been in school and five-in-the-morning email-checking had been the standard to figure out exactly what one was doing that day. 

On the other side, it had meant a difficult discussion, when he and all his coworkers had trooped to the bar after work for the traditional we-close-early-on-Fridays unwind, one full of Does It Really Help and What Kind Of Person Would Consider Such A Thing and I Heard Down South There Was and Terrorism Spreading Everywhere and What Should We And The Country Do? 

_Kill them all,_ Sarah had professed, hand curled into a fist on the smooth wood beside her drink. _Anyone who can even imagine that is subhuman. They deserve no less._

She had two kids herself, he’d remembered, focussed on her blonde-streaked hair across the table. He couldn’t quite say their ages - the youngest one was in kindergarten, wasn’t she? So her position wasn’t - well, it was understandable, everyone wants the safest world for their children. He himself would be terrified to think anyone might want to lay a hand on Torak. 

But _No,_ he’d wanted to say, biting the inside of his cheek to hold onto his self-control. _No, the world is safer now than it has ever been. Terrorism is not on the rise, we’re just scared of it more. And even if it was,_ he’d wanted to say, _people can do terrible things because they tell themselves the people they’re doing them to don’t matter, and so we can’t just turn around and say that they don’t matter in turn, we have to be better -_

 _Look. I used to want to wipe out all my enemies too,_ he’d wanted to say. _I used to think just like that._

 _That was back when I was one of those terrorists._

He’d wondered what Sarah would do if she ever got her wish, a gun in her hand and all the people she hated, all the terrorists and kidnappers and criminals and Others lined up before her and she found out they weren’t so Other after all. 

But then again, they lived in a town of barely this side of 1000 people. Absolutely nothing was going to happen, the school lockdown drills were only a matter of legality, and the news was just scaremongering again.The earthquake drill, now; that was many many times more likely, and even that chance was too small to change anyone’s behaviour. 

The gravel down on the drive crunched, which was odd. He’d expect it was the mail truck, except the mail didn’t come on Tuesdays. Either that or somebody who was hopelessly lost and had finally swallowed their pride enough to ask for directions. It had happened before, the roads weren’t exactly intuitive, although usually they picked one of the nearby houses with a shorter driveway. 

He got one more piece split before whoever it was arrived near the top and killed their engine, and he tossed the two halves onto the pile with the rest. Two car doors slammed in quick succession. A man said something he couldn’t identify, voice carried low through the late summer quiet, and another, different man answered. 

And the world stopped. All of it, the ground lurched as though the earth had stopped spinning, and his ears felt dull as though all the air had fallen still, and an ice-cold knot settled in his chest where his heart should have been. 

Because he knew that voice. Knew it as well as he knew his himself - had known it for as long as he’d known himself, had slept only one wall away for years, been driven to school and teased about girlfriends and handed down college notes. Had been emailed - websites, articles dredged from the depths of the internet, the kind of thing you deleted your history after reading. Had sat on a locked church stoop in the falling evening cold with and talked about justice and righteousness and necessity, and - A swell of memories climbed out of the dark pits at the back of his mind, and fire bloomed behind his eyes again like cactus flowers, and he knew exactly what Tenris was here for. 

_But maybe not,_ filled in a desperate portion of himself, grabbing for any straw it could. _Maybe he just wants to talk, maybe he wants to mend things - I mean, I got away from all that, so why couldn’t_ \- 

Yeah, he didn’t even believe his own self on that. 

The sunlight was still warm and golden, and everything smelled like cedar, and he was going to die. 

The air was still frozen in place, it must have been, because it refused to come when he breathed. Everything was very distant and also incredibly close, the lines in his vision sharp as glass edges. He watched from some faraway place as his own hand set the ax down in the soft dirt. Head first. Then handle. Turn. Three steps to the shed door. Fingernails under the edge. Open. Step inside. There was no way to lock the door - he didn’t keep anything valuable in here. And even if there had been, it was only one thin sheet of wood thick. It hadn’t been meant to keep out anything other than rain. His heart had figured out how to work again, and he thought it was going to break his ribs. 

The plexiglass in the window was smeared and scratched to almost total opacity, but there was still a tiny square in the bottom corner that was clear enough to see through. He moved as slowly and silently as he could over the the window and peered through it. Both men were closer, the grass swallowing their legs up to the knees. Maybe it was only the smudged plastic, but his brother didn’t look older, like even time was too scared to come near him, and he turned his head and said something to the other man. There was something blued metal in his hand. 

Soon enough he’d see the dropped ax and the pile of fresh wood and would realize there was only one place Hati could be, and he was going to die in here in the dust with the stupid wire rake and the tiny half-stripped table and the shelves of empty mason jars and drain cleaner and clotting leftover paint and boxes of screws and - 

Drain cleaner. 

Some part of him was still panicking, still trying futilely to draw a full breath, still screaming to run run run, to do whatever it took, mind scrubbed blank of anything but fear. Another part of him went icily calm, fixing its eyes on the white plastic and coloured label, and it formulated a couple of thoughts. 

He was going to die, that was certain. This was revenge, plain and simple, and there would be no way to try and talk Tenris down, he undoubtably truly believed it was just, but at least he could decide this for himself. He’d spent thirteen years clawing Them out of his brain, telling himself his mind was his own. His life was his own. He didn’t have to give in and let Them own his death either. 

He reached out and picked up the bottle, trying not to rattle the steel shelf. It made a quiet glick sound - still mostly full. He didn’t think he’d used much. The warnings - corrosive, poison, reactive - disappeared under his fingers. 

“Forgive me,” he let himself mouth. _Forgive me Torak, I promised you fires, I promised you blackberrying, I promised you I would always be there for you and now it turns out none of that will come true, I’m sorry I won’t be able to pick you up today and you will be left all alone, please - please know I love you more than anything. Forgive me God, I know this is technically a sin but you have to understand I have no other option._

He twisted off the cap in one motion, careful not to touch the underside, set it upside-down on the table, and then took the bottle back in both hands. It fit perfectly within the curve of his palms. 

_Kill them all._

Start here. 

It could not have been worse had it been red-hot ashes. It _burned,_ every inch it touched - all the soft places under his tongue, the spaces between his teeth, in the back of his nose. He couldn’t stop tears springing again to his eyes and spilling down the side of his cheeks. Some foolish part at the back of his brain spat out a memory, _strongest base that can exist-_ before being drowned again. 

It was a lot of effort, trying to force his throat to open, accept the punishment he was putting it through. He desperately wanted to choke, wanted to spit it back out and make the pain stop, but if he did that he might live, it might be too slow, he had to kill himself _now_ \- 

Eventually instinct, deciding no more could be stood, took over his hands and pulled it away, placed it back on the table. Enough fell on his lips that he felt them split and tingle, the burn spreading out into his lower jaw. 

Hopefully that was enough. 

It had to be, because it was bad, it was very bad, his chest was now on fire and he couldn’t even breathe around the pain, let alone drink anything more. Like the man on the tarot card, pierced with swords of flame. God, it felt like his insides were dissolving - well, he supposed that was exactly it. Arms wrapped tight around his ribs, Hati let himself slide to the ground, curled over enough that he could press his forehead against his knees, mouth prayers and curses into the darkness behind his eyelids, to try not to drown in the pain. _Let it be quick. Let me black out soon, and God, take my soul_ \- 

Footsteps crunched through the dry grass nearby.The hinge complained, like it always did when opened too fast. And light poured over him, and he was forced to peel his eyes open again and try to see anything through the blur of his tears. 

Tenris stood over him, dark against the bright of the day outside, and the gun was no longer in its holster but in his hand, and he wore an expression that was unfathomable. Not pleased, not angry, just - nothing. Hati knew then with perfect clarity that this had been a while in the planning. And he took in all of it - Hati and shed and poison - with one slow look, before taking two soft steps forwards - Hati couldn’t suppress a flinch - and bending closer to him. “What have you done?” he asked, as though they were young again and Hati had only broken something he shouldn’t have, as though he wasn’t dying before him and Tenris didn’t have a gun he fully intended to use, as though there weren’t twelve years and an unclimbable escarpment of ideology that separated them. 

He’d taken talking so much for granted, hadn’t realized how many muscles it really required. How much damaged flesh even the least word pulled on. “You tell me.” _You forced me into this, after all. It’s you I’m trying to get away from._

Something tightened around the edges of Tenris’s mouth, and he stood back, falling out of focus. But it was still obvious when he lifted the gun to a better position. Hati saw the muscles in his hands tighten the instant before the sound. 

It felt like being punched, what breath remained briefly knocked out of his lungs. Somebody whimpered, and he thought it was probably him, which was strange because there was hardly any pain. At least, relative to the white-hot jagged poker that seemed to be lodged in his gut and throat. 

His vision was starting to go grey and fuzzy around the edges but he smelled blood now too, on top of the cedar. Probably that was his as well. 

Still composed and totally serious, Tenris crouched down next to him, carefully not touching, and Hati saw him again raise the gun out of the corner of his eye . A half-second later, he felt the barrel touch right beside his right ear. 

It was hard, and cold, and actually not a bad sensation at all compared to the burning through the rest of him. This one tiny point that was not pain. 

“Guess you could call this mercy, huh?” There was the edge of a smirk in Tenris’s voice and the world was getting very indistinct and he didn’t have enough focus to work out what was wrong with that. _Do it_ , he wanted to say, but by then his mouth and throat were all eaten down to raw flesh and it came out as nothing more than a thin release of breath. 

He probably should have kept his eyes open. But by then he was too far gone to bother.


End file.
